Should UK TOCs be required to have AdBlue Systems installed?

Yes

No

Shipping is outside the Paris Agreement. There has been some progress but not enough. The article in the FT today said that there is no dry dock capacity to install scrubbing technology on shipping until 2020 and there is apparently a loophole where they can dump the scrubbed suplhur into the sea. That is like fitting scrubbing to trains and letting them lob the suplhur into the river Ouse as they approach York.

Cruise ships are the one that really get me. I was in Cozumel in Mexico last year and 4 massive cruise ships turned on their engines at the same time. That is a beautiful island of 100,000 suddenly having the same pollution as a city with 4 million cars moving at the same time. Nuts and totally unnecessary.

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There is a lot of anger at the proposed cruise ship terminal at Greenwich for similar reasons.

New licensing requirements from 1 January 2018
Since 1 January 2018, taxis presented for licensing for the first time have needed to be ZEC. This means having CO2 emissions of no more than 50g/km and a minimum 30 mile zero emission range
First-time taxi vehicle licences are no longer granted to diesel taxis. ZEC taxis with petrol engines need to meet the latest emissions standard (currently Euro 6)

Yeah but cruise ships are awesome. If they wanted to build one of those terminals outside my house (if i lived in water) i would be outside literally welcoming them onto site to make them build it faster.

Yeah but cruise ships are awesome. If they wanted to build one of those terminals outside my house (if i lived in water) i would be outside literally welcoming them onto site to make them build it faster.

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Why ? They are a special group of tourists who usually spend nothing in the local economy save for the local tourist attraction gift shop because they have spending money on the ship as part of the package and the coaches carrying them add to congestion and pollution on our road network. That's ignoring the environmental impact of the ship itself. Please note this is a not a argument against tourism in general- it's more to do with the whole idea of the cruise ship, it all seems too sheltered and removed from reality and the environmental impact is too much to be acceptable and must be dealt with.

Why ? They are a special group of tourists who usually spend nothing in the local economy save for the local tourist attraction gift shop because they have spending money on the ship as part of the package...

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I spent nothing on board when I was on a cruise.
I spent lots in the local economy at the places I visited.
The people I went with were the same.
Anyone who spends money on the cruise ship is an idiot. I mean, £7-£10 for a 330ml bottle of coke? £3.50 for a small tub of pringles? Yeah, okay!

I spent nothing on board when I was on a cruise.
I spent lots in the local economy at the places I visited.
The people I went with were the same.
Anyone who spends money on the cruise ship is an idiot. I mean, £7-£10 for a 330ml bottle of coke? £3.50 for a small tub of pringles? Yeah, okay!

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The only time I went on cruise was down the Yantze and several rail engineers had just finished a new build high speed project and were off on a good holiday. They ordered pallets of beer for delivery to the dockside for departure and only the non beer drinking passengers bought anything on board during the entire trip!

A lot of cruises are of little benefit to the local economy, for the environmental damage they cause, especially if they are half board, i.e. the passengers leave after breakfast and return by 6pm for dinner

Why ? They are a special group of tourists who usually spend nothing in the local economy save for the local tourist attraction gift shop because they have spending money on the ship as part of the package and the coaches carrying them add to congestion and pollution on our road network. That's ignoring the environmental impact of the ship itself. Please note this is a not a argument against tourism in general- it's more to do with the whole idea of the cruise ship, it all seems too sheltered and removed from reality and the environmental impact is too much to be acceptable and must be dealt with.

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It’s not the cruise part that I like. It’s the ship part. I like all ships not just cruise ships.

I think they're more like EVs with a range extending engine. A bit of semantics I suppose but they have a decent electric-only range and are intended to drive as EVs until the battery runs down whereas PHEVs have a shorter electric range and frequently start the engine. Also, PHEVs usually drive the wheels mechanically when the engine cuts in while a taxi is always powered electrically - the engine runs an alternator just like a diesel electric rail vehicle.

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The important point is can they be charged up at home or when a cabbie is on a break?

The only time I went on cruise was down the Yantze and several rail engineers had just finished a new build high speed project and were off on a good holiday. They ordered pallets of beer for delivery to the dockside for departure and only the non beer drinking passengers bought anything on board during the entire trip!

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So you had a pallet of beer kegs on a boat trip up the Yangtze and you didn't eat or drink anything else? Beer's never a good idea on a boat

I spent nothing on board when I was on a cruise.
I spent lots in the local economy at the places I visited.
The people I went with were the same.
Anyone who spends money on the cruise ship is an idiot. I mean, £7-£10 for a 330ml bottle of coke? £3.50 for a small tub of pringles? Yeah, okay!

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Well, there are clearly a lot of idiots around,since a lot of people on the cruise shop programmes spend huge amounts of money onboard!

It’s not the cruise part that I like. It’s the ship part. I like all ships not just cruise ships.

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I agree with this. I inherited the gene that caused my Nana to call the police to find my Mum when she was little and disappeared in Liverpool, only to find her trying to get on a ship to Canada 'because I was always taken with how white the Canadian ones were. They just looked so magical'.

That's why I was so horrified when I discovered their emissions profile. The engineering of many ships themselves - awesome. The fuel choice for powering them - immoral. The number of ugly big container ships required for ugly big amounts of unnecessary tat that ends up in landfill or the oceans - immoral.

As for cruise ships, I had a tiny bit of involvement in the Liverpool cruise ship terminal. Cities like Liverpool clearly want it, other cities like Venice are starting to hate it. I sort of think it is up to cruise ships calls to decide for themselves. However, the ships absolutely must change their emissions profile (ship to shore power, electric out of port, LNG at least out of port with scrubbing (but no dumping) or they need to go.

As for those who think they don't spend anything on board, what do you think your ticket price covers???

Food was already paid for but not beer /wine (the Ozzie engineers were a bit concerned about running out too!). Pallets of 24 pack cans much easier to handle logistically than kegs!

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Still, a 24 pack of beer isn't that great a contribution to the local economy and people who have to put up with the pollution the cruise ship produces. As you mentioned, the food was already paid for.

The scrubber retrofit programme that would really make a dint would be shipping. Unbelievable emissions profile.

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Cruises are less of an issue, more freight. I listened to an interesting slot on From Our Home Correspondent podcast (BBC radio 4) yesterday which explained about trials of returning to shipping by sail. For things like containers where throughput is more important than speed (i.e. as long as you keep feeding it "in" often enough, after the initial "priming of the pump" you receive sufficient goods at the timings required) this really does merit consideration.

And of course assumes the cab driver has a house to charge it up. Useless if they live in a flat.

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Legal requirements for freeholders to arrange charging points to be installed at all allocated parking places (paid for via the service charge) might be a start. On-road parking is harder to do but they could still be installed.

So you are OK, tough on the neighbours then, especially those unreasonable enough to suffer from asthma.

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Far greater issues are cause by the sheer number of BBQ restaurants in some urban areas. Some have their noxious vents attached to Network Rail structures and chuck putrid smoke, animal fat and grease onto the line and into the drivers cab when held at signals. Why local authorities who claim to care about the environment continue to licence them is beyond me.

So you are OK, tough on the neighbours then, especially those unreasonable enough to suffer from asthma.

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Quite.

The Government already plans some quite strong restrictions on them. If those are inadequate, we will need to ban them in urban areas. That would be sad, but it would be preferable to the return of the smog and serious health problems, as well as ugly, black, smoke-stained buildings like they were until as recent as the 1990s.

4 of them will stink more than four of your typical old terraced house in the 50s which normally had only one coal (rather than wood) fire in the lounge and you simply wore clothes elsewhere in the home.

If you live on a farm, fine, but there is really no place for these used on a daily basis in any town or city, and even less place for several of them. If you must burn wood (and it is a renewable resource), fit a proper biomass boiler with a scrubber.